Dark Road Back: Deep State Down, #2

By Dana Fraser and Christa Wick

In this gripping sequel to the post-apocalypse action thriller HARD WAY HOME, the answers behind an onslaught of not-so-natural disasters only lead to more questions as a global depopulation conspiracy threatens Americans from right in their own back yard.

 

Retired Army Colonel Thomas Sand returns to the U.S. during its darkest days, only to find the leaders left in government—puppeted by the deep state elite—want him dead. Between the threat assessment algorithm he developed before the apocalypse, and the fact that his wife Becca and stepdaughter Hannah are both brilliant scientists critical to the new world order, his family isn't short on enemies. And despite all his training to the contrary, his only duty now is to them and their safety. Unbeknownst to him, halfway down the coast, his wife is fighting to drag her fevered and battered body home with no means of communication, and only the help of a nameless stranger…

 

Meanwhile, Dr. Hannah Carter, still traveling with the Army veteran who saved her life, discovers she may be the linchpin to destroying the dangerous shadow government that now controls what remains of the fast-crumbling U.S. But to do so, she must leave behind everyone she cares about and face off against the hidden puppet master pulling the strings from his bunker. Unbeknownst to her, Cash Bishop, her fearless companion turned ruthless protector, has followed her into the lion's den, no violence spared. His only light in their new broken world of neverending darkness, finding Hannah is a given. As is taking down the corrupt powers that destroyed his country once and for all…

 

The DEEP STATE DOWN Series

- Hard Way Home

- Dark Road Back

 

Publisher's Note: This newly-combined 125,000 word story was originally released as two separate standalones, Home Port (c) 2016 and Fire Wall (c) 2017.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christa Wick
• Release date: Jan 22, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224399062

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Prodigal Son

Shifting restlessly in his seat on a midnight flight bound for Dulles, retired U.S. Army Colonel Thomas Sand covertly studied the other passengers. They didn't look like lambs heading to slaughter, but his gut told him that most of them were. And they couldn't say they hadn't been warned.

The television screens in the Brussels terminal were running wall-to-wall coverage of Hurricane Otto spinning its Category 5 destruction all along the Gulf Coast. Updates on the sabotage at Hoover Dam were mixed in, as was news of cascading regional blackouts and the unprecedented effect on telecommunications that knocked out both cellular service and landlines from coast-to-coast.

Weird that not a one of the newscasters pointed out that landlines only stop working if the phone lines go down. Power outages are irrelevant.

Thomas knew there were more warning signs than what had made it into the news. The threat assessment app his company had spent two years actively developing showed a country—his country—on the edge of upheaval as more ambiguous factors coalesced, their gray shapes foreshadowing something sinister. Assault rifle sales had spiked sharply, as had pro-ISIS chatter among U.S. residents and visa holders. Attempts by individuals on the no-fly list to buy tickets had surged and several dozen people of Middle Eastern descent had been cited for loitering around U.S. airports.

He rolled his shoulders, glanced at his watch. An hour had passed since the plane doors had closed and they weren't any closer to taking off. Twisting in his seat, Thomas all but laid across the lap of the middle-aged woman next to him to look out the window.

The night sky was filled with activity. His brow tightened as he tried to place what was off about the view. After a few seconds of hard staring, he realized the spacing of the lights on the other aircraft was the source of the scraping sensation against the back of his skull.

Ground control was letting smaller, executive-sized, jets take off ahead of the Boeing 747 with its three hundred plus passengers.

The woman next to him cleared her throat, her body tensing as Thomas continued to drape his torso over her legs.

Sorry, he offered half-heartedly as he settled into his seat. Just seems odd why we’re still on the ground.

She offered a blank look. He repeated his words in French, which earned him a bored shrug.

He shrugged back then turned his attention to the flight personnel and other passengers. Ten rows up, one of the attendants had stopped, bent low and was speaking directly into the ear of a male passenger. Her hand rested on his shoulder and Thomas wondered if it was from familiarity or an attempt to keep her balance.

Familiarity, Thomas mused, followed by another thought after a few seconds spent focusing on the passenger.

Gotta be an air marshal.

From what he could see from behind, the man was well within the parameters of what a federal law enforcement officer looked like, especially the kind they stuck on planes, which didn’t happen nearly as often as people thought.

The man’s hair was closely trimmed, he wore a solidly middle-income business suit and he hadn’t removed his jacket in anticipation of the long flight, even after an hour of waiting for the plane to get off the ground. Probably early forties, Thomas judged by the crinkles at the corners of the man’s eye and mouth visible when he turned his head and replied to the attendant in an equally familiar manner.

For forty something, he was leaner than most businessmen, too.

Sticking his head into the aisle, Thomas looked at the passengers seated in the rows behind him. Some watched the attendant with a hint of anxiety, but they all had the look of regular travelers. Whatever was happening, they would remain clueless until the plane touched down in Dulles.

The seat belt light came on and then the captain announced they would begin taxiing shortly. Thomas offended the woman next to him a second time as he dipped his upper body in her direction to see how many of the smaller jets remained in the sky.

Troubling, he said, his voice low as he complied with the captain’s order to turn off any electronic devices. In doing so, he gave his phone one last check. The European network was still running, but there was no sign that his family had received any of his warnings.

The flight over the Atlantic lasted almost as long as the difference in time zones. The time wasted circling Dulles International Airport just outside the nation’s capital promised to stretch longer than the hour spent idling on the Belgian tarmac.

Closing in on five a.m. on the East Coast, they were locked in a holding pattern, his side of the plane facing into the circle they had looped around the airport at least three times. Thomas had flown in and out of Dulles often enough to know that there was an unusual amount of traffic in the pre-dawn sky. But, stuck on the inward side of the plane, he was only viewing a narrow slice of the picture.

He didn’t like what he could see. The airport was running on emergency lighting. Neither Hurricane Otto nor the precautionary shutdown of the dams should have affected the Northern Virginia power grid.

Grabbing his carryon from under the seat in front of him, he pulled out his field glasses then disobeyed the seatbelt sign and unhooked. Moving to the opposite side of the plane where there was an empty row, he pressed the binoculars to the window.

He wanted to see what kind of traffic was still in the air, but the first thing he noticed was the absence of lights in the residential neighborhoods surrounding the airport. At ground level, D.C. itself would be beyond the horizon with only its light pollution visible. But, at the current altitude of the plane’s holding pattern, the city itself should have sparkled in the night.

It didn’t. The only lights that came within Thomas’s field of vision were those of the same type of small aircraft he’d seen in Brussels and a lot of military helicopters.

His grip tightened reflexively on the binoculars as one of the flight attendants approached him. The man Thomas had pegged as an air marshal walked a few steps behind the woman.

Sir, you need to return to your seat.

The tone of her voice suggested nothing more than irritation and impatience. To her, the delay was a routine annoyance.

She must not have looked out the window or consulted the flight crew.

No way in hell the D.C. airspace at that moment was routine. Nothing about the city was routine.

The woman tugged at his bag when he didn’t immediately comply. Thomas let her have it after a glance at the air marshal’s face and a second one along the tailored lines of the man’s jacket. That split second of observation was all it took to pick out the faint bulge of the air marshal’s holster and the butt of his service weapon beneath the business jacket.

Extracting himself from the row, Thomas followed the stewardess back to his seat, stowing his bag and field glasses after her waspish direction for him to do so. The air marshal lingered for a second, eyeing Thomas as Thomas eyed him in return. The stand off between the men ended with the captain’s voice coming on to announce that the flight had finally been cleared for landing.

Securing his seatbelt, Thomas closed his eyes and tried to quell his racing thoughts. The flight had been scheduled to land two hours earlier at one of the Concourse C gates near the Federal Inspection Station, with his connecting flight leaving from the same concourse. Normally, that would mean he could claim and recheck his baggage within the FIS and have a shorter TSA line and maybe, just maybe, not miss the connecting flight to St. Louis he had booked. If he had to use the International Arrivals Building then get back to the C gates, he’d better pray his flight to St. Louis was suffering similar delays.

With the lights out—he just hoped the connecting flight hadn’t been cancelled.

Exhaling, he released a silent prayer that there were still commercial flights leaving the city. If everything was on the verge of chaos, he had to collect his son Ellis and step-daughter Hannah, then figure out his next step in reaching his wife. And, for that, he had to gamble on whether Becca had decided to shelter in place at the vacation rental in South Carolina, return home to Evansville or head for his son’s boarding school.

The plane began its descent at a stomach lifting speed, almost like the aircraft was dropping out of the sky. A few startled cries echoed Thomas’s queasy perception, then the wheels hit the tarmac and everyone was pushed hard into their seat backs.

The minute they reached gate speed, Thomas unhooked his belt and pulled his carryon out from under the seat. He would have stood up, but he was already on the air marshal’s shit list and tangling with the man would turn a few minutes of delay in disembarking the plane into hours locked in a room somewhere in the vast recesses of the airport, leaving Thomas in the dark in more ways than one.

Sliding his phone from his pocket, he checked the signal to find zero bars. He glanced to the side as his row companion checked her device and offered up a very French sigh.

All around him, similar sighs and a few snarled curses repeated in the recycled air they had all been breathing for at least ten hours.

Angling his head to look out the window, he muttered a thick handful of swear words as he saw the faintly illuminated back of the International Arrivals Building. This was wrong. Even if they weren’t disembarking at one of the C Gates, they should have exited the plane at another concourse then taken one of the airport’s hulking cattle cars they called mobile lounges to the IAB.

Just how bad had the situation become? When he had boarded the plane some ten and a half hours before, the Belgian news stations were reporting the same U.S. outages as his threat assessment app had shown—both in power and communications. But that meant the Midwest, New England and other large swatches of the country still had electricity.

Now the capital—the whole damn capital and its suburban tentacles—was pitch black.

The plane stopped, the captain cautioning everyone to remain seated. A dozen or more passengers jumped up and left their rows to stand in the aisle. Thomas joined them, his eyes locked on the back of the air marshal’s head.

When the captain cleared passengers to retrieve their carryons, those already in the aisle surged forward, towing a willing Thomas in their wake.

Someone pushed at his back as he reached the first class area. A glance over his shoulder revealed a woman with an oversized carryon cradled against her stomach and breasts.

Short in stature and appearing to be in her eighties, the woman threw up a look that could have cleaved bone if the rest of her had suggested anything more than a lifetime of cultivated hostility toward the world. He turned his attention back toward the exit as he heard the stairs clamp into place.

Grinding his teeth, Thomas shuffled along until he reached the open plane door, the old woman and her bag still jabbing at his spine. Her irritating presence faded to nothing when he reached the stairs attached to the jet and saw the formation of Customs and Border Patrol agents lining each side of the back entrance to the building. Battery operated stage lights illuminated a path from the end of the stairs to the doors.

Unintentionally, Thomas locked eyes with one of the two agents closest to the plane. Bulky, with closely cropped hair, the man stared at him for a few seconds as Thomas blindly descended the steps. The agent’s face seemed to settle into some kind of decision then his head swiveled to the black CBP agent on the other side of the line.

They nodded simultaneously and Thomas felt his balls clench and retract. He had no time to wait in a hall in the Pentagon or at the White House to explain why he had sent a warning message in Brussels to some of the key government and military officials he had worked with in the past.

"Putain, c’est sombre," the woman behind him whispered with a twinge of fear in her voice.

Yes, it was dark. So was the inexplicably hostile stare of the CBP agent.

Thomas closed the gap that had opened on the stairs, his body practically stuck to the man in front of him until he hit the last step. That was when Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee peeled away from their spot by the stairs and motioned Thomas to step out of line.

The white agent, the one who had locked eyes with Thomas, gave him an imperceptible nod. Colonel Sand?

Checking the man’s name tag at the same time, he nodded back. Agent Franks.

The already bunched muscles of Thomas’s shoulders tightened further. With the lights out, resources at the airport and in the city would be strained. He was more than a man with an algorithm who had fired off a bunch of emails. As a retired Army officer, he could be recalled to active duty.

Franks’ partner pivoted and jerked his head at the side of the International Arrivals Building, the direction different from that in which the passengers were being carefully herded.

We need you to come with us, sir.

Of course, Agent Astere, Thomas answered as he read the man’s name.

The tension in his shoulders began to intensify and spread outward at the phrasing of the request. He had heard Astere’s tone in Military Police dozens of times while waiting to pick up soldiers in dire need of an ass chewing. He had used the same tone hundreds of thousands of times. There was a firm order in the way the agent had spoken to him.

And the man had a hand resting on the butt of his service pistol, the holster unsnapped. A casual glance at Franks revealed the same stance.

They appeared ready to pull leather and shoot, but why?

Walking with them around the building’s corner, he forced himself to keep a relaxed posture. He even softened it so he looked more like the fifty-six year old he was who had just spent ten-plus hours on a plane in the cramped quarters of business class.

What’s the issue, gentlemen? Thomas asked once they were out of hearing range of the other passengers.

Franks lost his stiff-backed demeanor.

The Department of Defense hasn’t told us anything, sir. Just that they need to talk to you, the agent answered with an easy smile as his tone moved from cop to friendly conversation. Someone is on their way.

In a civilian, Franks’ smile would have been at odds with the heavy tension that seemed to hang in the air. But Thomas was long familiar with the way that military and law enforcement professionals cultivated a relaxed readiness and were capable of finding humor at times regular people would be weeping and puking.

We’ll have one of the other agents make sure your luggage gets brought down, Astere added to the explanation as he slid his ID badge through a card reader on the building’s side door. He leaned toward Thomas as he opened the door to reveal a landing and a long, wide flight of subterranean stairs.

Here, there was no need for emergency lights. The stairwell was fully lit, a fact that confused Thomas.

The civilian departures are cancelled, Franks said, his voice echoing as they descended. Just bringing the last of the planes down from the sky before they run out of fuel.

Thomas forced his throat to relax and threw Franks a smile. Any chance I can get an internet connection while I’m waiting?

Hell, I wish, the man laughed then gave his left shoulder a slap where the microphone for his walkie-talkie was attached. Everything but our radios went down two hours ago. Central is whining that they actually have to write shit on papers with pens.

Forgetting himself for a second, Thomas responded with a throaty snort. He remembered those mission-critical days when a loss of power brought everything to a frustrating, sometimes deadly, standstill. At his age, he hadn’t expected to see those days again.

But they were here, he suspected. This was more than just a power outage. The CBP agents were holding back.

Thomas patted his hands around his pockets, locating the blu-tooth earpiece for his phone while pretending to look for his cigarettes. I suppose there’s still no smoking even when the phones and internet are down.

Yep, Franks answered as they reached the bottom of the stairs and he swiped his badge through another card reader. Sorry about that, Colonel. Could use one myself, to tell you the truth.

I’m supposed to be quitting, anyway. The wife, you know, Thomas continued, loosening the men up. Stopped for a whole damn month. Not that I’ll get any leniency for good behavior.

His hand dipped into his pocket. He pulled out his phone, checked the signal, found it still down, then discreetly started the beta of another app his company had developed on the side. Informally named Proximity Snoop, his teenaged son’s behavior had inspired Thomas’s request that the tech guys come up with something that would allow him to casually forget a phone in one room then listen in on that room through his earpiece.

You just don’t realize how attached you are to these damn devices until they stop working, he complained in his best old man voice as Astere and Franks led him down an empty white hall that stretched at least fifty yards.

Turning his head, he nodded at Franks’ gun.

Looks like a Maxim 9. Didn’t realize those were becoming standard issue.

Thomas had noticed the odd shape of the holsters as the agents approached him outside the plane. But the significance of the change from the agency’s usual firearm carry hadn’t clicked in his head until he found himself in the sterile emptiness of the underground hallway.

Franks and Astere were carrying guns with built-in sound suppressors, the technology so good it wouldn’t be wrong to call them silencers. The 9mm handgun was integrally suppressed and, in its full length configuration, hearing safe with any 9mm ammunition. Pieces of the modular baffling could be removed to shorten its overall length by more than an inch while remaining hearing safe with subsonic ammunition.

He had fallen instantly in lust with the pistol after firing it at a gun show.

Pilot program, Astere answered after a short delay then laughed and twirled his finger in the air like the planes still circling far above them with dwindling fuel supplies. Say we have to pop some jihadi. Less noise means less panic among the civilians.

Thomas nodded with sage understanding. They were right, but the explanation didn’t ease the tension burrowing deeper into his bones.

Who did you talk to at DoD? he asked as they reached a numberless door right before the hall T-sectioned.

Astere swiped his badge through the card reader then held the door open for Thomas to enter first as Franks answered the question.

Central didn’t say.

But they know to come here? Thomas asked, casually setting his phone on a bookshelf as they entered some kind of exterior office area with a desk and chair in the middle and another door on the opposite wall.

Sure thing, Colonel, Franks soothed, walking toward the second door and opening it. You mind waiting in here? We have to try reaching central again and…well, right now, you’re not cleared for any information we might get.

Eyes scanning for impromptu weapons, Thomas replied with a nod and a tired roll of his shoulders. Passing the imposing metal desk that divided the room, he paused again, shook his head and pressed both hands against his back, taking a short stretch to further cement in the agents’ minds that he was a man past his prime and fatigued from the trip.

Through the foot or so of open door space, he could see black backpacks in heavy duty nylon. Layered on top of them were bulletproof vests, the white-lettered decal of CBP Special Operations stamped big on each of them. Unlike the traditional vests cops wore, the ones in the store room resembled the Army’s old Interceptor vests, with their extended back and front to protect the spine and groin and a collar device for the throat. If he gave one of the vests a squeeze, he’d probably feel ballistic plates beneath the nylon and padding.

You guys are really ramping up your gear, he laughed, then spotted case after case of water stacked to the ceiling in one corner of the outer office. He jerked a thumb at the tower of bottles. Looks like you’re laying in for the apocalypse, too.

Nah, some sorry bastard has to hump those upstairs for the arrivals since the vending machines are out, Franks answered, the friendliness exhibited in the long walk down the hall fading from his voice as Thomas continued to delay. We’ll have an update for you soon, though. Just sit tight on the bench back there, Colonel.

Hearing the door click shut, Thomas stuffed his earpiece in and began to listen.

CHAPTER TWO

Exit Sign Ahead

Thomas could hear Franks and Astere moving around but not any words. They certainly weren’t contacting central. This deep underground, he doubted their radios worked.

Optimizing his time alone, he scanned the room for obvious cameras then moved over to the CBP bags and opened one, his carryon slung across his back.

The top layer of the CBP bag held an empty water bladder, a first aid kit, and four Glock magazines, each one holding thirty-three 9mm rounds. As Thomas dove deeper into the bag, Astere finally spoke loud enough for him to hear the agent.

You saw his status, right?

Yeah, Franks said, his tone low enough for Thomas to believe both men were whispering near the outer door, mere inches from where he had placed his phone on the bookshelf. He has a threat warning, but I couldn’t bring up the link. Then the whole fucking system crashed.

So…what? Astere asked. Does that mean we kill him or just detain until the DoD guy shows up?

There’s no DoD guy, Franks snickered. I made that up on the fly so he wouldn’t give us any shit and rile up the sheeple getting off the plane.

Look, Franks continued before falling into a short, ominous silence. Way I figure, a threat is a threat. We kill him and claim he tried to escape. You see that dive watch he’s wearing?

Finding a folding combat knife inside the bag, Thomas pulled it out and extended the blade.

It was a Fox Karambit, the three-point-two inch curved blade never failing to remind him of a cat’s claw. He tested the honed edge, a grim certainty flashing across his face.

The pointed tip buried between the base of the skull and first vertebrae meant instant death, while the curved edge was a beautiful little throat slitter. Personally, Thomas preferred insertion behind the jaw just a little below where the ear ended. The target died a tad slower, but the spot was easier to strike during an intense struggle than the small window to the brain stem at the back of the skull.

Opening up a throat, on the other hand, required going deep if death was the desired outcome.

For Thomas, in that subterranean warren of locked doors, death was definitely the desired outcome.

Listening to the debate in the outer room, he tucked the knife up his sleeve, inserting it handle first with his thumb riding the flat edge of the blade to keep the weapon in place.

Damn wedding band is probably plati⁠—

Astere clammed up as Thomas noisily opened the storage room’s door, a forced cough on his lips.

Any chance I can get one of those waters? he asked as both men walked toward him. Last cart service on the plane was more than four hours ago.

The agents tried to maintain friendly faces, but their hands hovered near their firearms. Thomas waited until they cleared his side of the heavy metal desk then let the handle of the Karambit slide into his waiting palm.

Astere smiled, dark eyes glittering with a poorly concealed malice. Sure thing, Colonel. Let’s go crack one⁠—

The agent didn’t get another word out. Thomas grabbed him by the shoulder, fisted the fabric of his shirt and jerked down, spinning the man’s body one hundred-eighty degrees at the same time. Fast as lightning, Thomas found the sweet spot just below Astere’s ear and jammed the curved blade deep as his other hand dropped and wrapped around the grip of Astere’s Maxim 9.

He didn’t stop to draw leather, just tilted the holster upward and fired at Franks’ gut, praying that the manufacturer hadn’t added an external safety since the gun show.

Shock spread across Franks’ face as parts of his stomach misted the air behind him.

Thomas removed the pistol from its holster then crossed his arm over to Astere’s opposite shoulder, pushing on the side of the dying man’s head where the Karambit was buried. Angling the barrel of the gun down as Franks pawed at his own weapon, Thomas opened up the agent’s head with another round.

With one target completely neutralized, he pushed against Astere so that the man slid off the blade with a wet sucking sound.

By the time the agent’s body hit the floor, he was dead, but Thomas shot off one last round to be certain.

Wasting no time, he grabbed Franks’ pistol and the security badge that would open the doors. He shoved the badge in his pocket then dropped the magazine on the Maxim to check its load.

Seeing that the magazine was for a Glock and the bullets were 9mm, same as what was in all those CBP backpacks, he grinned.

Wearing one of the agency’s windbreakers over the Interceptor vest, Thomas entered the parking garage closest to the International Arrivals Building with his carryon and a CBP backpack over his shoulder. He bypassed the expensive SUVs, the luxury sedans, and anything and everything manufactured in the current century. He kept walking, his steps starting to drag until he came upon a mid-to-late 70s Granny Caddy. Beige with a white cloth top, the Coupe de Ville’s exterior looked like it had only been taken out on Sundays then polished and put away like wedding silver.

Despite his heart jackrabbiting against his sternum back in the underground storeroom, he had risked five minutes grabbing as much as he could discreetly carry out of the building. For breaking into the Caddy, the CBP bag had already been packed with everything he would need, including a slim jim.

For some reason, Customs and Border Patrol planned on opening a lot of locked car doors.

Curious times, he whispered, taking out the slim jim.

Squinting in the darkness, Thomas rotated the brim on the CBP cap he had liberated from the storeroom. His mouth a thin line of concentration, he slid the hooked end of a thin strip of spring steel between the Caddy’s window and the door’s rubber seal. He fished a little to the left then eased upward a few inches, moved right and fished a little more until he felt the hook catch on the rod attached to the door lock. Taking a slow breath in as he gazed around the parking level, Thomas slowly slid the slim jim up. A satisfying click rewarded his efforts.

He opened the door and tossed his bags in then pushed the driver’s seat back as far as it would go. Turning on his phone’s flashlight app, he opened up the Karambit and pulled out a small black roll of electrical tape from his carryon. He put the Caddy in neutral, placed his phone flash side up on the floor then contorted his six-foot frame into a pretzel to work open the ignition cover.

The cover popped, a fistful of wires descending.

With a rough swallow, Thomas moved the phone with its light a little closer and disconnected what he hoped were the battery and ignition wires. Using the Karambit, he stripped the insulation off the ends then twisted them back together.

The dash lights stuttered on.

Squinting and praying at the same time, he scraped off the insulation to the starter wire, his fingers feeling fat as he struggled to avoid touching the exposed strands.

Headlights pierced the darkness.

Thomas flipped his phone and jerked the two joined wires apart. He wrapped one hand around the Maxim 9, and patted along the floor with the other. Finding the power button for his phone, he killed the display light.

A two-way radio squawked over the approaching purr of a car’s engine. Airport cops, CBP, security—the driver’s exact identity didn’t matter. Thomas figured anyone still on duty was part of whatever the hell was going down at the airport.

Some kind of coup?

The sweat dotting his face joined and slid in fat drops down his skin. A cramp squeezed at the muscles of his right leg, the limb tucked and twisted against the seat as his grip on the handgun lightly pulsed.

An eternity seemed to pass before the lights moved on and the sound of the vehicle faded to nothing.

Thomas lifted his head, took a few darting glances around the parking garage then repaired the work he had just torn apart. Finished stripping the starter wire, he touched it to the two lines he had twisted together.

The Caddy grouched and coughed a few times then came to life. Thomas cut off a measure of the electrical tape and covered the wires so he wouldn’t electrocute himself while driving. The Caddy threatened to stall. He revved it a few times, his gaze glancing off the fuel gauge.

The owner had parked it with a full tank, which he figured was somewhere around a twenty-five gallon capacity. But the sedan was an old beast. The best he could hope for was ten miles a gallon. That gave him no more than two hundred and fifty miles out of an anticipated trip of eight hundred miles to reach his Indiana home.

There would be other cars, he reminded himself as he settled the Maxim 9 across his lap and pulled out of the parking space.

Looking for the structure’s exit sign, he mentally planned his route for the trip ahead. To reach Ellis and Hannah, he had to travel west. But first he would drive south toward Centreville where Gavin DeBerg, an old acquaintance, had moved during early spring.

Thomas figured if an old app developer half a decade out of the military was a threat, then so was Gavin.

Unless, of course, the man was an accomplice.

CHAPTER THREE

Old Friends, New Foes

Gavin’s Centreville home stood on a one-acre plot with another hundred acres of public parkland behind it. The house itself was an ostentatious eleven thousand square feet distributed among two stories and a finished basement. Separate quarters attached to the house had their own garage space for the red haired au pair from Ireland with the perky breasts who had spent most of her work hours in the pool or tanning alongside it on Thomas’s last visit.

Instead of pulling up to the house, Thomas drove the Cadillac down a bike path that started half a mile away and parked the vehicle out of sight of the main road. Engine idling, he ran a line up the AM and FM dials one last time as the sky lightened to a muddy orange.

The radio was nothing but static, no commercial or emergency stations left broadcasting. Some short wave stations or hobbyists might be on, but his travel radio was in his checked baggage at the airport. And he couldn’t use the bloodied CBP radio he had taken from one of the dead agents. With the unit’s built in GPS, he had only kept the device until he was free of the airport.

Knowing he was losing the ability to listen in on any Federal or local law enforcement channels, he had felt a hollow twinge in his gut when he opened the Caddy’s window and let the hand radio fly. But the risk of keeping it with him was too damn high.

Thomas killed the engine then prepared the wires so he would only need to give them a quick tap together if he had to haul ass away from Gavin’s home. Next he popped the trunk to make sure there were no goodies stored inside—like a shotgun or a rifle.

Finding the space empty of everything but the spare tire with its cloth covering that matched the spotless carpet, he groaned. Granny didn’t even have a jack in her trunk.

Conquering the urge to slam the lid, he closed it gently then pushed down until he heard the lock engage. Placing both of his bags on the car, he took a few minutes sorting through his supplies. The most essential items went into the CBP bag.

Leaving the bike path, Thomas carried everything with him.

He walked through woods he had spent time bird watching in over the Fourth of July weekend. Becca and Ellis had been with him on that trip. Thomas hadn’t yet committed to sending his son off to an all-boys private high school for his senior year. Becca had just wrapped up a project for her company that was, and was not, part of a grant from the National Security Agency.

Among the three of them, there had been a sort of détente on the extended holiday weekend made more relaxed by the presence of outsiders.

Nearing the end of the trees surrounding Gavin’s home, Thomas found a brush pile and concealed the carryon bag. A quick scan of the immediate ground confirmed there was no other pile he could mistake as the one he had used. He also spotted a football-sized rock near the base of one tree. He picked it up and walked to the outer edge of Gavin’s lawn without breaking cover. He dropped the rock, got on his knees and pulled out his field glasses.

Gavin lived in a subdivision of multi-million dollar homes with lots from one acre to ten and values ranging from the roughly two million Gavin had signed for to upwards of thirty million. For the DeBerg family, the new home was an increase in land and square feet but a large step down in cost. Thomas had viewed the move as a reprimand by Gavin to his German-born wife Agnetha because it took her away from the art gallery crowd she had endlessly fawned over when the couple lived in Arlington.

Just thinking Agnetha’s name caused a wry smile to surface on Thomas’s face. He flattened his lips to erase the uncharitable grin then remembered he was alone in the woods at the beginning of what could be the end of the United States, if not the world. There was no reason he couldn’t laugh at the May-December couple if he wanted to.

There was plenty to laugh about. Gavin’s wife was the opposite of the virgin martyr whose name she carried. The former ballet dancer had turned photographer when she aged out of the profession at thirty-two. Even after the birth of the couple’s